When visiting a friend who teaches at a university, I found myself looking at a printout of a strange pie chart. It looked at first glance like something produced by a cult targeting the terminally insecure, offering various paths to self-improvement and enlightenment. However it turned out to be a diagram presenting the skill sets required by postgraduate researchers.

An idle google brought up a whole website full of further documentation about this framework, produced by Vitae. It seems that there are 63 skills, each of which can be further subdivided into five levels of attainment. I was reminded of this (begins 12:30 minutes in).

Some people will leap on any opportunity to avoid what they should be doing in favour of peripheral preliminaries – and it’s very easy to imagine a certain type of student striving for perfection in all these areas, going up the levels like a Dungeon and a Dragons character – rather than actually producing a thesis.

Given the hike in student fees and the loss of the EMA – the production of this obsessively elaborate scheme and its reams of associated documentation didn’t seem like the best use of public money. My friend seemed to be drowning in grant applications, marking, publishing deadlines, research audits, and countless other still more thankless tasks. Bureaucrats have plenty of time to produce superfluous schemes, new hoops for everyone to jump through – but lecturers seem to have no time to fight back. But perhaps they – and their students – don’t want to? I’m surprised to find no critical or simply satirical comment on this – not because I think what it’s saying and promoting is particularly objectionable – simply because it seems so cumbersome and unnecessary.

Shiraz Socialist has on a number of occasions described Mr George Galloway, MP for Blackburn Bradford West, as a “Stalinist,” a term that implies a belief in a form of socialism, characterised by state control of the means of production and opposition to private property.

“But my main political mistake, in retrospect, was that state ownsership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, in which I believed, and for which I campaigned, was a false God…Yes I’m not saying that everything in the private garden is rosy. There’s just more flowers than there were in the state garden. I’m sorry to say that, and, yes it is painful.”

…we accept that it was completely untrue to suggest that Mr Galloway is presently a “Stalinist” or, indeed, a believer in any ideology that could be described as in any remote way, however degenerate, as “socialist.” We unreservedly apologise to Mr Galloway for any distresss caused to himself, any of his wives, or Mr Ovenden.

We accept that Mr Galloway is a godly, religious man, perhaps a Catholic or possibly a Muslim, but either way he opposes secularism and seeks to re-introduce religiously-based communalism to British politics. As Ms Aitkenhead notes:

“We had talked a great deal about the role of religion in politics, and could not have disagreed more. I thought it outrageous to urge voters in Bradford, as he did, to vote for him or fear the wrath of judgment day. Galloway can’t see the problem at all: ‘I believe that, on judgment day, people have to answer for what they did.’ When I ask if he is troubled that many voters thought he had converted to Islam, he replies: ‘Well, I don’t think many of them are interested in my religion’ – which is pretty rich, considering he put out a leaflet all about which candidate was more of a Muslim. Contrary to every report I’ve read, he doesn’t deny writing the leaflet himself. I think he is ludicrously slippery about invoking religion, playing it both ways to suit his own purposes, but, as he says, we are never going to agree because he doesn’t think politics should be secular. ‘So it’s apples and pears, dear’.”

Watching Murdoch’s performance reminded me a little of The Godfather. In the gangster genre, the most powerful mafiosi are often elderly, amiable and rather ineffectual-looking figures in bad clothes, who look like they should be living in old people’s homes, and sometimes are. But that belies their power.

No, I’m not saying that Rupert Murdoch is a member of the Mafia, or behaves like one, or that he has done anything improper. But he is, nevertheless, a great study in the charisma of power. When you possess this kind of aura you don’t need to throw your weight about. You don’t need to look threatening, or bark or growl. In fact, you hardly have to do anything at all, because everyone does your bidding, practically before you have even thought about it yourself. So, I’m sure Murdoch told nothing but the truth when he said, “I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything in my life”. At this level, you don’t have to ask.

While more than 30 individuals wait to hear if they will face criminal charges, reputations are in shreds and political careers on life support, Murdoch, like a Marvel Comics villain, puts on the don’s Borsalino at the end of last week’s show, flashes the re-enamelled fangs and is swept from the Royal Courts of Justice looking triumphant. Of course he has been irreparably damaged by the scandal, as he pointed out several times (like all true villains, Murdoch aspires to victimhood). It’s just that he seems to be suffering a good deal less than anyone else who became entangled with his enterprises.

I sat on a sofa, Brooks perched on the arm of another sofa, and Murdoch walked and talked. He was excitable and angry. “You’ve impugned the reputation of my family,” he said at one point. He called me “a fucking fuckwit” and became furious at my bemusement that he should find our campaign so upsetting, given that one of his newspapers famously claimed that it did indeed decide elections.

Brooks said very little, but, when her boss’s rage blew itself out, chipped in with: “We thought you were our friend”. Their use of language and the threatening nature of their approach came straight from the “Mafioso for Beginners” handbook.

………..

His statement does, however, reveal a much wider and more significant truth: the Murdoch way of doing business. If you come to our parties, if you join us on our yachts, if you are at our cosily-arranged dinner table, we might expect something in return, but we certainly don’t expect you act in a way contrary to our interests. And if our largest-selling newspaper supports your political party … well, it’s not difficult to guess the rest.

In retrospect, that incident in the Independent newsroom was the first sign of a fissure in the edifice of News International. Little more than a footnote in newspaper history it may be, but what it betrayed was a breathtaking lack of judgment and discretion, the head of the country’s most powerful media organisation straying on to the sovereign territory of another newspaper to berate the editor over an incontestable truth in an advertising campaign. It’s the same lack of judgment, together with a monumental arrogance in the wielding of corporate power, that has led us to where we are today. Which, of course, is the eve of the appearance before Lord Justice Leveson of Rupert Murdoch, the capo di tutti capi.

I’m sorry I didn’t take my camera to the Pedal on Parliament event yesterday. It started in the Meadows, and the lines of cyclists under the avenues of cherry blossom were a splendid sight. The police estimate for numbers was 2500. Spokes estimate 3000.

It was a bright day with a freezing north east wind, and the clothes you wear for cycling are not the warmest ones for standing around in waiting for the pedal march to begin. All ages there – small kids on cycles with stabilisers, smaller ones on bike seats or in buggy-trailers. Bikes of every descriptions – old roadsters, mountain bikes, racers, unicycles and tandems for three. People in smart, sponsor-logoed club clothing or in tweed suits, though of course day glo yellow cycling jackets predominated. Then through the Meadows, and down the Royal Mile. To the motorists we must have been their nightmare – the contemptible speed-impediments bunched together, in huge numbers. To me, used to being a minority on the literal fringes when cycling through the streets, it was heartening to be in the mainstream for once and part of a dominating majority.

Then down to Holyrood. The grass area below the new Scottish parliament is a good area for rallies – it’s spacious, and also sheltered from the wind.

The politicians who addressed us had won clout for their activities on behalf of cycling. One stressed that they were not talking about “funding for” but “investment in” cycling – that is, cycling is not an add on, but as an integral part of transport and the economy in general. Others (I didn’t note who said what) evoked Stockholm and Scotland’s climate change measures.

In Edinburgh cycling has increased from 1% to 7% of road use and it has been assigned 5% of the transport budget. Pressure from local groups like Spokes, along with some effective councillors, have made a great difference. My naked eye has seen far more cyclists commuting and, as a spin-off, more cycle shops opening. Near where I work two more have opened in the last year. I’d say there were six within easy pushing-your-cycle distance.

Updated:- There was a similar event in London – turn out of 10,000. A couple of accountshere.

‘Don’t buy a pig in a poke’ might seem odd and archaic language. It’s true that the phrase is very old, but actually it can be taken quite literally and remains good advice.

The advice being given is ‘don’t buy a pig until you have seen it’. This is enshrined in British commercial law as ‘caveat emptor’ – Latin for ‘let the buyer beware’. This remains the guiding principle of commerce in many countries and, in essence, supports the view that if you buy something you take responsibility to make sure it is what you intended to buy.

On May 3rd, as well as the local elections, there will be refereda in 10 English cities on whether they want elected mayor instead of a leader and cabinet.

The idea of elected mayors seems to have the support of most national political leaders from the main parties. We’re told that it will revitalise local governmet, put the cities on the map, bring in investment, enthuse the electorate, etc, etc. Strange then, that the campaigns for elected mayors seem to have attracted so little interest or enthusiam from the electorate. Perhaps the unedifying Livingstone v Johnson farce in London has put people off.

The whole idea has its roots in the kind of 1980’s managerialism so favoured by the Blairites, with its emphasis on “charismatic” leaders unencumbered by the petty bureacracy of committees and cabinets…and (one suspects) democracy itself. It has never been explained how an elected mayor is going to revive local democracy or boost investment, or do any of the other wonderful things that enthusiasts for the system claim for it.

Interstingly, in Birmingham the keenest campaigners for an elected mayor (and the presently declared contenders) are all Labour politicians of the Blair/Brown era: Siôn Simon, Liam Byrne and Gisela Stuart – three of the most shameless careerists and wretched hacks to have graced the Paliamentary Labour Party in recent years (which is surely saying something). The Tories and Lib Dems in Brum are publicly opposed to an elected mayor and Tory Councillor James Hutchings is running the “Vote No to a Power Freak” campaign (that compares a future mayor with Hitler), but it is the worst kept secret in Brum that if the referedum goes in favour then Tory council leader Mike Whitby will immediately throw his hat in the ring.

The strangest thing about the entire elected mayor “debate” is that no-one knows what powers they will possess or exactly how the system will work. A recent letter to the Birmingham Mail put all the right questions:

THOSE in favour of a directly elected mayor for Birmingham have yet to address the following questions:

* How can Birmingham’s electorate vote on the creation of an office whose powers central government have yet to determine?

* How can potential mayoral candidates make credible promises over the next few months when central government will not announce the mayor’s full powers until after the election in November?

* An elected mayor will require only 40 of Birmingham’s 120 councillors to vote for their budget and strategic policies to be approved, whereas under the current system a majority of the council is required. How would this change enhance democratic accountability?

* In future it will require an Act of Parliament at Westminster rather than a referendum for Birmingham to change the mayoral system should it prove unsatisfactory. How is it more democratic for central government to remove forever the right of Birmingham’s people to trigger a referendum on how they are governed?

* Will elected mayors be able to decide for themselves to reduce the number of local councillors and the frequency of local elections?

* An elected mayor will be able to appoint an unlimited number of deputies, advisers and commissioners. What democratic scrutiny will there be of such appointments, how are their salaries decided, and can they be removed from office by anyone other than the mayor?

*Under what circumstances can a mayor be ‘recalled’ or otherwise dismissed during their term of office?

Rather than vague arguments about personalities offering ‘strong leadership’, the debate on elected mayors should address these serious questions about the future of local democracy in Birmingham

-David Parker, Hodge Hill

As far as I’m aware no-one has yet provided Mr Parker with the answers he seeks. But it’s not quite true that we have simply no idea how the system would work. Apart from the London experience, there’s also:

* Stoke, where Labour Party member Mark Meredith was elected Mayor in 2005, only to decide that the mayoral system was unsuitable for dealing with the City’s long-term financial deficits and re-forming a de-facto Cabinet model for the council (the ‘Elected Mayor and Manager’ arrangement). When the government withdrew this option and ordered a second referedum in October 2008 the position of Elected Mayor was abolished and replaced by the old council leader and cabinet set-up (albeit on a turnout of just 19%). Mr Meredith continued in his £69,000 role until being arrested in March 2009 on suspicion of misconduct in public office and complicity in corruption in public office. In the end no charges were brought due to “insufficient evidence.”

* Doncaster, where Peter Davies of the English Democrats was elected in 2009 with 22% of first preferences on a 36% turnout (ie 8% of the electorate) on a platform of “English freedom and values not multiculturalism,” withdrawal from the EU, an end to political correctness and mass immigration and “the right to enjoy and celebrate Englishness.” He has stated that Britain could learn about family values from the Taliban; perhaps unsurprisingly, his first act on election was to cut the funding to the town’s Gay Pride event. He is also on record as stating that “there is no such thing as child poverty.” In 2010 the audit commission declared that Davis “lacked the political skills to build and maintain consensus” and acknowledged that his public statements had served to “worry sections of the community who are already vulnerable.” Since then the running of Doncaster has been overseen by a team of commissioners sent in by the government.

With these inspiring precedents, it’s pretty obvious how Brummies and the others should vote in their referenda… isn’t it?

I heard recently that Dave Spencer has died. Dave and I were comrades together in the proto-AWL prior to a split in 1984, when Dave left with a group of people around Alan Thornett who he didn’t agree with politically. He spent a lot of his time after that complaining in various left publications about the “bureaucratism” of the “Matgamna sect.” He also did the rounds of various left groups (including for a while, even Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party!) looking for a political home he never found.

We’d got to know each other quite well in the late seventies and early eighties as we were in the same organisation and lived near each other, he in Coventry and me in Birmingham. I liked Dave and despite his later political trajectory, I choose to remember his early days and the positive contribution he made to the struggle.

In 2009 he wrote a long article (forthe commune) which included a section on his experiences with left organisations that had related positively and successfully with the working class. I wouldn’t agree with all of it, but overall it’s a good piece and the best way I can think of to remember Dave:

I’ve been in various groups on the Left for 50 years. In my experience there have been a number of periods when Left Groups in the UK have connected with class struggles and grown as a result. In each case the method of organising has come from the members against the bureaucracy and sectarianism of the leadership. I will give a few examples.

The SLL and the Young Socialists

In the early 1960s the SLL (Gerry Healy’s group) took advantage of the formation of the Young Socialists by the Labour Party in 1960 to build a sizable youth movement. This was the period after 1956 – the loosening of the hold of the CP — with the Hungarian Revolution and Khruschev’s speech to the 20th Congress; the formation of CND and the New Left Review; the shock to British imperialism of Suez; and of course youth rebellion in the form of Rock and Roll. The SLL had gained some new members after 1956 and were less of an homogenous group than later. I was a delegate to the first Conference of the YS in 1960 which brought together a large group of independent youth, mainly sons and daughters of Labour Party members. There were three small factions operating within the YS – the official right wing faction around the paper New Advance edited by Roger Protz (later editor of Keep Left and then of Socialist Worker and then of the Campaign for Real Ale!); the SLL’s faction around their paper Keep Left and the paper Young Guard which united the Cliffites and Grantites (surprise surprise). Within four years Keep Left had taken over the NC of the YS and had built the YS into a large organisation. In 1964 when Keep Left was expelled from the Labour Party, we had 8,000 at a demo outside the LP’s Blackpool Conference.

The way the SLL achieved this was by getting University students to go into Council Estates to organise weekly discos and weekly meetings for the youth of the area. Delegates from the youth groups were then sent into their local constituency Labour Parties.

The students were organised in Marxist Societies in the University. They did not participate in the Student Union politics as Left students do now — pushing their own sectarian groups. The Marxist Society was open to any discussion of Marxism. In Leeds and Leicester where I studied we focussed our meetings on particular departments like Agriculture and Engineering as well as Economics and Sociology to try to get students discussing Marxist approaches to their particular academic subject. We then encouraged the students to accompany us to the discos.

The originators of this scheme were not the SLL Central Committee but some youth in Wigan YS who started a weekly disco which soon became very popular. Through Keep Left young socialists learned about the Wigan experience and copied it in their own areas. In those days Rock and Roll and jiving were banned in the city centre ballrooms so a local disco run by the youth themselves was naturally a winner. In Leicester three of us from Leeds aged 21 built an SLL branch of 30 within 6 months using the Marxist Society and YS disco method. Essential to this method was that the youth organised and controlled the discos themselves, not the SLL’s older members.

The problem was of course the bureaucratic and hierarchical nature of the SLL. Orders came from above and there was no trust in the life experience or creative ideas of the youth. Many of the older members of the SLL did not approve of regular discos because it made the youth more difficult to control.

The politics of the SLL became more esoteric and sectarian. I remember during the purge on Pabloism in the group in the early 60s, the regional organiser identified a member of our YS branch in Coventry as a Pabloite and was in full flight denouncing him when a spirited youth spoke up: “Hang on a minute Harry, he’s only 15 years old!” A sense of proportion and a spirit of humanity was not what you got in the League.

The International Socialists and shop stewards

The second example was in the late 1960s in the IS (later SWP) after the 1968 French Events; the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and Grosvenor Square marches; the rebellion in the Universities; and the Labour government’s “In Place of Strife” policies which were designed to curtail the power of the shop stewards’ movement. The SLL which was the largest Trotskyist group at the time refused to join the VSC demonstrations and were not very influential in the Universities. In a shrewd move, Tony Cliff opened the doors of IS promising democratic rights, freedom for factions, regular Internal Bulletins etc. He invited various groups to join and was particularly keen to attract disaffected members of the SLL. He toured the country and was very successful in recruiting new members. Jim Higgins claims that the reason for this opening up was that Cliff was frightened of the effects of Enoch Powell and fascism and that it was not a genuine anti-sectarian move at all. Nevertheless the move was effective.

The particular pro-active method used to build IS branches was the adoption of the industrial bulletin method from the French group Lutte Ouvriere. I believe this method started in Manchester where there was a nest of “Workers Fight” members who were active on the docks. Workers Fight was set up in 1967 by Sean and Rachel Matgamna and was the only group to take up Tony Cliff’s offer of factional rights. I was a founder member of Workers Fight. The point is that the LO bulletin method started at the grass roots not on orders from the Central Committee.

The industrial bulletin method is quite simple but takes a lot of organising. We used to produce fortnightly bulletins which were handed out at particular factory gates on both the day shift and the night shift, to both shop floor and office staff. Once a week there would be a paper sale at the factory gates as well. The bulletin itself consisted of one sheet of A4 with comment on topical political events on one side and comment on what was happening in the factory on the other. Naturally we needed contacts in the factory to get information and to discuss what went into the bulletin. At least once a fortnight a meeting of a factory fraction of IS members and contacts would discuss the next bulletin and how to produce and distribute it. Students were a vital part of this work because they had the time to distribute the leaflets in the early morning. We never exposed our factory contacts to the possibility of being sacked. In Coventry IS we had factory bulletins going into most of the major factories in the city. In 1970 we had about 100 members most of whom were shop stewards. At Chrysler we had an IS factory branch which had international connections with Detroit and Simca in France via the Lutte Ouvriere factory bulletins in the USA and France.

As with the youth discos, there was life and creativity in the method of organising. The IS leadership took a benign attitude at first, as had the SLL leadership. After all members were being recruited, papers were being sold.

However in 1971 Cliff decided to bureaucratise the group. There had been some disagreements over policies. For example Socialist Worker welcomed the British troops going into Northern Ireland in 1969. Also SW called for a No vote in the referendum on the Common Market – contrary to IS Conference which had called for a boycott. Actually there was quite a healthy if heated debate on both of these issues but Cliff unleashed a witch-hunt on Workers Fight as a means of asserting control on the organisation as a whole. The expulsion of Workers Fight was an excuse, a way of warning against any kind of dissent. Factions were banned, the Internal Bulletin closed down and after that, opposition groups were expelled or individuals left in dribs and drabs.

Politically the IS suffered from what we called “workerism” where worker members were flattered and appointed to positions in the group while the political level was kept deliberately low. Trade Union militancy was seen as the answer to all the problems in industry – a disastrous policy throughout the 70s and ending in the defeat of the 1984 miners’ strike. Open and democratic discussion of Marxist politics was not encouraged. Also national rank and file papers were produced by the leadership and the local industrial bulletins were dropped.

The Labour Party in the 80s

A third example of organisation from below was in the 1980s when there was a growth in the Left of the Labour Party as a result of the fight against Thatcherism and her attacks on local government and the Trade Unions. There was the Benn for Deputy campaign and the de-selection of right-wing MPs and local councillors. One would have thought that this would have been the opportunity for the third Trotskyist group Militant to come to the fore by opening up their organisation. Many people have claimed that this was the case and that Militant was the dominant force at the time. However Militant always maintained a strictly sectarian approach to organisation in the Labour Party. They never participated fully in Broad Left groups and in elections for Council candidates or Committee places in LP constituencies they would vote for right wing candidates rather than for any left wing candidates they thought they could not control. For example when I became a candidate to be a West Midlands County Councillor for Coventry South East which Militant thought was “their patch” their fury was unbounded and threats of violence were made. The Militant had voted for the right wing candidate against me. Later they organised to knock me off the shortlist for MP for Coventry North East by spreading rumours that I was a “sexist womaniser” in order to get on their preferred candidate, their “contact” Bob Ainsworth, now Minister of Defence for the Armed Forces. The fact that at the time I was responsible for an Adult Education Programme in a College in Coventry North East for working class women which in 1992 had 2,271 women on it and won the NIACE national award for Access to Education during Adult Education Week may give some idea of what sort of “sexist womaniser” I was! This was not a personal matter but a political method adopted by the Militant and I was by no means the only victim of this sectarianism.

Instead of opening up their organisation Militant maintained a top down control. Socialist Organiser did make some attempt to develop a broad base in the Labour Party but without any success. London Labour Briefing also played a role. The phenomenon was however that the Labour Left grew and organised without any real national centralised organisation. It was much bigger and in many ways more radical than the Militant.

The Labour Party structures provided a routine way of organising. These structures correspond to electoral activity. There are your local ward meetings to go to. The wards then send delegates to the local constituency. The constituency sends delegates to the district etc. We did have some power over selection and de-selection of MPs and councillors and we did have some say in local Council policy; so resolutions at Ward, Constituency and District levels did mean something. We did feel we were making a difference and we were. If the Left controlled a Ward, we could write our own leaflets for election campaigns and decide on our own candidates. Those powers have been taken away by the New Labour bureaucracy to control from the top down. Those comrades who claim that there will be a new upsurge within the Left of the Labour Party must think of new ways of organising. At the moment most LP meetings cannot get a quorum of members. And if they did get a quorum what would the members do? They have no power to do anything.

Methods of approaching the working class did tend to be based on routine. Canvassing was much easier than now because you had more members and usually met up afterwards for a drink. Some comrades did a questionnaire or survey of local problems as they went round canvassing – and then encouraged people to come to ward meetings and address the complaints and put resolutions to the local Council. Many a ward was taken over by the Left on this basis. We had our ward banners which we took on demonstrations. Some comrades had a regular stall in the local shopping centre where they tried to recruit people. Social activities were organised. Our local Labour Briefing group used to have meetings on a Friday night at one period — with a speaker and a buffet. We also organised crèches and baby sitters to allow parents to attend meetings.

This was all done from below. In fact there was no real centralised political leadership of the Left in the Labour Party in the 1980s. Also most of the Left were more radical than Militant.

Some other methods of organisation I have been involved in.

In the mid 60s after the YS discos had been stopped, a dissident Keep Left branch in Coventry that I was a member of, ran a Folk Club, the Bandiera Rossa, in a local pub. In 1966 we organised a May Day celebration in the Belgrade Theatre with Dominic Behan, Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeker and a local Irish group playing. The SLL boycotted it. They said it was petty bourgeois. We also ran a Rhythm and Blues Club in a pub for a while with a resident band called the Edgar Broughton Band which had a few hits at the time.

In the late 70s when Workers Fight (later AWL) joined the Labour Party and the LPYS (then dominated by Militant) we resurrected the idea of recruiting University students and organising social activities for working class youth. We called it “Wiganisation” after the Wigan YS branch of the SLL. Instead of discos in community centres we went for bands in pubs (as described above). In Coventry we had a good relationship with the two tone bands, the Specials and Selector and organised an anti-racist concert in the athletics stadium when there were some racist murders in Coventry. Unfortunately the WF leadership stuck to the recruitment of students without turning them outwards to the working class youth. We did have some very lively and creative youth members at the time. The women members joined “Women’s Voice” and were involved in lots of feminist activities.

In 1997 during the SLP general election campaign, some women SLP members (ex Militant) objected to going out on stalls in the shopping areas, like the Militant. They said that it was a con trick because the Militant used to get signatures on a petition for a Campaign, say about the local hospital and then get people to donate money to the campaign; but the money went straight into the Militant coffers. They suggested having a pitch at the local car boot sale. We had our banner over the stall and our papers and leaflets on the stall with second hand goods collected from SLP members to sell. The response from workers attending the car boot sale was very good. We got into a lot of conversations. We also made some money legitimately from the sale of goods.

Pedal on Parliament: a mass ride on HolyroodGather at the Meadows on April 28th(2pm for a 3pm start)

Pedal on Parliament will be gathering cyclists from across the nation to cycle on Holyrood to tell our politicians that cycling matters, to show our need for safer cycling and cities fit for people. Please join us and help make a Scotland fit for cycling!

Background

In February, up to 2000 cyclists gathered in London to cycle on the Westminster Parliament in support of safer cycling and cities fit for people. On April 28th, to coincide with a follow-up ride in London, Pedal on Parliament will be gathering cyclists from across the nation to cycle on Holyrood. We’re asking everyone who cycles in Scotland – or who would like to cycle, or would like their families to cycle, but who doesn’t feel safe – to join us for a big ride of our own – and a big picnic. Young and old, keen commuter or weekend pedaller, fit or not – you don’t even need to be on a bike. You just need to show up and add your voice to help make Scotland safe for cycling.

What do we want?

We have created an eight point manifesto to help Scotland’s devolved government reach its target of 10% of journeys by bike by 2020, a target which is now also embedded in its low carbon and obesity strategies. The government’s present Cycling Action Plan [CAPS] is far too limited to achieve the target, whilst the proportion of the transport budget allocated to cycling remains wholly inadequate at under 1%. Our manifesto covers:

It’s a rare thing for anyone in the public eye to come out and simply admit they were wrong about something important. Oh yes, we’ve all heard the non-apology (“If you stupidly misunderstood me, I’m sorry about that,” as perfected by A. Blair Esq) and the “I was taken out of context”-type wriggling. But for a public figure to come out and plainly admit they were wrong on a major issue is, these days, a rare and wonderful thing.

“Vulliamy’s account of what happened in the camps is completely unanswerable; and I’m sorry now that I supported the small post-Marxist magazine Living Marxism when it was sued by ITN for questioning its reporting of the camps. It seemed to me at the time that big, well-funded organisations should not put small magazines out of business; but it’s clear that there were much bigger questions involved,” writes Simpson in the course of a review of The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia – The Reckoningby Ed Vullamy.

For those who don’t remember the case, it’s probably worth just running through the basic facts:

Early in the Bosnian war (August 1992) Ed Vulliamy of the Guardian, together with Penny Marshall of ITN and Ian Williams of Channel 4 managed to reach two Serbian prison camps, Omarska and Trnopolje, where emaciated Bosnian Muslim men were being held under conditions that looked very much like those of the Nazi’s concentration camps in WW2.

Ed Vulliamy, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams witnessed the skeletal figures at Trnopolje, but, at Omarska they managed to speak to some of the men: one said, “I do not want to tell any lies, but I cannot tell the truth.” Later it emerged that at Omarska prisoners were forced to bite the testicles off one another and had live pigeons stuffed into their mouths as they died in agony. Prisoners were forced to load the corpses of their friends onto trucks by bulldozer.

Vulliamy later wrote “Trnopolje was a marginally less satanic place, some of whose prisoners were transferred from other hideous camps to to await forced deportation. Others were rounded up and herded there like cattle, or had even fled there to avoid the systematic shelling and burning of their homes.” Less satanic than Omarska perhaps, but that isn’t really saying very much, as Vulliamy would be the first to agree.

Naturally, on their return the journalists reported what they had seen and ITN’s images of the emaciated figures at Tropolje (and especially that of Fikret Alic, above) came to sybolise the barbarity of the Serb genocide of Muslims and Croatians in Bosnia. They also almost certainly played a major part in bringing to an end the British foreign office’s appeasement of the Serbs.

Fast-forward to 1997 and an article in the trendy “post-Marxist” magazine LM (as in Living Marxism, its previous name), by one Thomas Deichman: “The picture that fooled the world.”

Centred upon the Fikret Alic photo, the article claimed that there was no barbed wire around Trnopolje and that “it was not a prison, and certainly not a ‘concentration camp’, but a collection centre for refugees, many of whom went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished.” Deichman, who turned out to be consistent supporter of Serb war criminals like Dusko Tadic and Radovan Karadzic, claimed that ITN and the other journalists had deliberately misrepresented what was going on at Trnopolje and had failed to correct the allegedly false impression they had created when other media repeated their claims. ITN believed that their journalistic integrity was at stake and sued LM for libel.

LM initially succeeded in obscuring the central issue by presenting the case as a ‘David v Goliath’ free speech issue, and persuaded some leading liberals to rally to their support: Harold Evans, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Fay Weldon and John Simpson all condemned ITN’s “deplorable attack on press freedom.” To this day, the likes of Noam Chomsky, Diana Johnstone and Alexander Cockburn refuse to acknowledge that what ITN and the other journalists said and wrote was true and that Deichmann and LM were simply apologists for Serb genocide.

Professor David Campbell of Durham University studied the case and summarised it thus:

“…as strange as existing British libel law is, it had an important and surprisingly beneficial effect in the case of ITN vs LM. The LM defendants and Thomas Deichmann were properly represented at the trial and were able to lay out all the details of their claim that the ITN reporters had “deliberately misrepresented” the situation at Trnopolje. Having charged ‘deliberate misrepresentation’, they needed to prove ‘deliberate misrepresentation’. To this end, the LM defendants were able to cross-examine Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, as well as every member of the ITN crews who were at the camps, along with other witnesses. (That they didn’t take up the opportunity to cross-examine the Bosnian doctor imprisoned at Trnopolje, who featured in the ITN stories and was called to testify on the conditions and others suffered, was perhaps the moment any remaining shred of credibility for LM’s allegations evaporated). They were able to show the ITN reports to the court, including the rushes from which the final TV stories were edited, and conduct a forensic examination of the visuals they alleged were deceitful. And all of this took place in front of a jury of twelve citizens who they needed to convince about the truthfulness of their allegations. They failed. The jury found unanimously against LM and awarded the maximum possible damages. So it was not ITN that bankrupted LM. It was LM’s lies about the ITN reports that bankrupted themselves, morally and financially. Despite their failure, those who lied about the ITN reports have had no trouble obtaining regular access to the mainstream media in Britain, where they continue to make their case as though the 2000 court verdict simply didn’t exist. Their freedom of speech has thus not been permanently infringed” (quoted on Wikipedia).

Why is this important? Well, as I noted at the outset, it makes a refreshing change to read a clear-cut, unambiguous apology and admission of error from a figure like Simpson (compare and contrast Chomsky’s self-righteous evasions). Secondly, it’s important to set the record straight about the Bosnian war and Serb genocide, as vile revisionism, repeating all Deichman’s lies is still to be found on the web, as though the ITN case had never happened. Thirdly, LM has succeeded in transforming itself into first Spiked Online and then the ‘Institute of Ideas’ and their people, as George Monbiot has pointed out, have succeeded in getting themselves lucrative and high-profile employment as supposedly ‘reputable’ commentators in the mainstream media (eg Mick Hume at The Times and Claire Foxon Radio 4’s ‘ The Moral Maze’).

And one final point: it wasn’t just the degenerates of the so-called Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)/Living Marxism who were de facto apologists for Serb genocide during the Bosnian war. A lot of the left did much the same, albeit less blatantly, including those who a few years on would pose as great friends of Muslims everywhere…

Miller: Get thee to Gloucester, Essex. Do thee to Wessex, Exeter.
Fair Albany to Somerset must eke his route.
And Scroop, do you to Westmoreland, where shall bold York
Enrouted now for Lancaster, with forces of our Uncle Rutland,
Enjoin his standard with sweet Norfolk’s host.
Fair Sussex, get thee to Warwicksbourne,
And there, with frowning purpose, tell our plan
To Bedford’s tilted ear, that he shall press
With most insensate speed
And join his warlike effort to bold Dorset’s side.
I most royally shall now to bed,
To sleep off all the nonsense I’ve just said.

………………………………..

They exit. Re-enter all four as rustics.

Miller: Is it all botched up, then, Master Puke?Bennett: Aye, and marry is, good Master Snot.Moore: ‘Tis said our Master, the Duke, hath contrived some naughtiness against his son, the King.Cook: Aye, and it doth confound our merrymaking.Miller: What say you, Master Puke? I am for Lancaster, and that’s to say for good shoe leather.Cook: Come speak, good Master Puke, or hath the leather blocked up thy tongue?Moore: Why then go trippingly upon thy laces, good Grit.Cook: Art leather laces thy undoing?Moore: They shall undo many a fair boot this day.All: Come, let’s to our rural revel and with our song enchant our King.

……………………..

Enter Cook and Miller, with swords.

Miller: Why then was this encounter nobly entertained
And so by steel shall this our contest be buckled up.
Come, sir. Let’s to it.Cook: Let’s to it.
Good steel, thou shalt thyself in himself embowel.Miller: Come, sir. (They fight)
Ah ha, a hit!Cook: No, sir, no hit, a miss! Come, sir, art foppish i’ the mouth.

Shakespeare’s birthday and death day so here’s a bit from Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. This is the speech of parlay at the siege of Harfleur. I think it was left out of the Olivier version, which was made in World War II, and was colourful and patriotic.. Branagh’s take on Henry V was to make it far greyer, muddier and bloodier than Olivier’s, emphasising the horrors of war.

Henry V. How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array’d in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch’d complexion, all fell feats
Enlink’d to waste and desolation?
What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?